Biden At Goodwin: Job Training A Community Effort

EAST HARTFORD — Vice President Joe Biden visited Goodwin College on Wednesday to draw attention to the ways that job training, when it's guided by industry, can help people move into higher-paying jobs and strengthen the middle class.

He praised the college's year-old manufacturing production training program and its ambitious expansion of manufacturing training this fall.

Goodwin, which had no manufacturing classes until 14 months ago, is now going to offer two associate's degrees, two certificates, a bachelor's degree and three shorter-term programs in machining and lower-level operator work.

"We can, we can, we can have the most educated, the most sophisticated workforce in the world," Biden said. "The federal government's not going to do this, the state government's not going to do this. It's the free enterprise system. But what we can do is connect the dots."

The state Department of Community and Economic Development gave Goodwin a $3.75 million grant, which is paying for some of the cost of buying machine tools, simulators and other costs of establishing hands-on manufacturing labs. Cliff Thermer, who leads the academic department that includes manufacturing, said the college has spent millions more on launching a manufacturing track.

Biden had lunch with 16 guests. Among them were four Goodwin manufacturing students; Thermer; Goodwin President Mark Scheinberg; Louis Chênevert, chief executive of United Technologies Corp.; and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy. Biden was headed to Fairfield County to attend two fundraisers later in the day to help Malloy's re-election campaign.

Before the event began, Chênevert said that United Technologies' Pratt & Whitney division, based in East Hartford, will have a large wave of retirements in the next decade, just as production ramps up for the geared turbofan engine and the engine in the Joint Strike Fighter.

"Training is about the next generation of worker," he said. "Pratt's going to be back to the level of volume we saw in the '80s."

UTC, which is Connecticut's largest private employer, donated $125,000 to Goodwin for the manufacturing program, and has contributed substantial input on the design of its curriculum. Two of the four new full-time faculty and one of the four part-time faculty members are Pratt retirees.

Malloy said that, for a time, "We were worried … we might lose Pratt & Whitney or other operations" of UTC. But, Malloy, like all the politicians who spoke at the event, expressed optimism about U.S. manufacturing's rebound.

"I have not visited, in the last year, a single manufacturer that wasn't looking for additional people, something we thought would never happen in the state of Connecticut again," Malloy said.

Biden addressed Chênevert directly in his opening remarks, saying that Pratt & Whitney "is a different company than it was 20 years ago." Chênevert nodded in agreement.

He also teased the CEO about Malloy's praise of his leadership, saying: "Louis, if you keep on, maybe we'll canonize you." Then Biden flashed his thousand-watt smile.

The number of manufacturing jobs in Connecticut has dropped every year for the past 15 years, and there are about 30 percent fewer jobs in the sector than there were then. But as workers retire, factories need to replace them, and Malloy said the state's economists project that the manufacturing sector will hire 2,200 workers each year for the foreseeable future. There are more than 160,000 manufacturing jobs in Connecticut.

Ron Gatchell, 47, of Cheshire, is one of the Goodwin manufacturing students who had lunch with the vice president. He manages the housekeeping department at a nursing home, but as a college dropout, he said his chances to move up were limited.

When he first enrolled in Goodwin, he said, he thought that he would work on the production floor, but now that the college has launched an associate's degree in logistics and supply chain management, he intends to continue attending classes part time for another year. He's borrowing to cover the tuition, which costs about $9,000 yearly as a part-time student.

He said that Goodwin College officials told him: "'We're going to give you the opportunity here you're not going to have anywhere else."

"They were true to their word," Gatchell said. "You saw who we had lunch with today. It was incredible."

Biden, in explaining why he came to Goodwin, told the group: "I don't have to remind anybody we went through a god-awful recession." He said the country lost nearly 9 million jobs. "The recession clobbered the middle class. The previous eight to 10 years, the middle class was already losing ground. But things have begun to change."

"There's a lot we have to do to restore the middle class," he said. He said his father used to say: "A job's a lot more than a paycheck. It's about your self-respect. It's about your place in the community. It's about dignity." He said the government needs to do its part to make "sure they have jobs that are worthwhile."

In the first 14 months, 101 people have started in Goodwin's Certified Production Technician program, which takes two semesters to finish if you take two classes at a time as a part-time student. Eighty students enrolled two or three semesters ago, so they could have finished, and of those, 33 have graduated, and 20 are still taking courses. Thermer said it looks like the program will haveabout a 50 percent completion rate, in line with Goodwin's general retention rates.

Campaigning For Malloy

After the opening remarks, the discussion with the students and executives was closed to the press, but Biden took a few questions after lunch.

When asked why he came to Connecticut to raise money for Malloy's re-election, he said: "I think it's important to keep really good men and women in office."

"I'm prejudiced, he's my friend. He's a Democrat. I'm a Democrat," Biden said. "I acknowledge that. But by any standard, this guy has done more. How can we be arguing about whether the minimum wage should go up? Sixty-seven percent of the American people think the minimum wage should go up."

He said that Malloy was one of the few governors who got it done, and then Malloy jumped in and noted that he was the first.

Republican National Committee spokesman Michael Short said that with two fundraisers and just one substantive event, "It's clear Vice President Biden's visit is more about salvaging Dan Malloy's re-election chances and treating Connecticut as Democrats' piggy bank than anything having to do with creating jobs."

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